The Common Cold Unit

On Virology: An Empire-grade meta narrative

A friend recently commented that he had caught a cold virus at a conference, in the context of a broader discussion about virology and the “pandemic.”

He said that as a way of falsifying the work of Cowan and others that are leading the way on questioning the foundations of virology.

I said something to the effect of:

Colds post conferences, can have other plausible explanations. EMF being one.

Catching colds via viruses was studied for 44 years by the Common Cold Unit. Remains unproven.

"Novel pathogen" that “leaked” from a lab that spread around the world killing people in 2020. Disproved by the work of Rancourt.

Can they make stuff in labs that can make people sick or dead? Sure.

Can you use that to start a “pandemic” panic, with the media doing the rest. Sure.

But can they make something from genetic matter that “can pandemic.” I am confident the answer is no. It is not biologically plausible. So in that context, the biolab risk is wildly exaggerated for financial and industrial “pandemic preparedness” reasons.

Anyway, in saying that I thought I would do a stack about The Common Cold Unit (CCU). It’s an inconvenient part of virology’s history, and a story I think is important amplifying. The CCU first coined the term “corona virus.”

Why am I not surprised it was in England.

I think that early on they understood that virology, as a meta narrative, would have significant long term geopolitical value, let alone the obvious industrial and financial value.

We are living within that “value” today.

I try to hold my ideas lightly, but I now think that virology is a meta narrative on the scale of climate change, that has been developed for long-term Empire-grade purposes.

We now know that the climate change narrative is a construct. You can read about the primary developer of that narrative here and here.

It is clear that these totalitarian meta narratives can be created, with mountains of money, plenty of co-ordination and planning and above all, time and patience.

Virology has all the hallmarks of a patiently constructed meta narrative. In that context it is far more important, powerful and valuable to Empire than even climate change.

The bio-security state that is now all around us could not exist without virology.

The section below is from The Final Pandemic by Drs Sam & Mark Bailey. Well worth gifting to curious friends!

The Final Pandemic: An Antidote To Medical Tyranny: Bailey, Dr Samantha, Bailey, Dr Mark

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But Can’t You Catch a Cold?

We have been raised in a world where most of the medical industry and the public take it for granted that “viral” illnesses are contagious. There is a complacency that further investigations into direct evidence that viruses cause disease or even exist appear unnecessary. People are getting sick with similar clinical illnesses and seem to be passing it onto those around them, so what more is there to know? Take the common cold, for example. As publications such as the New York Times stated in 2003:

Colds, of course, are caused by any of several hundred different strains of virus. People get more colds in the winter at least in part because nasty weather drives them indoors to make extremely close contact with one another’s infectious mucus.

These days, “catching a cold” is commonly understood to mean that a “viral infectious disease” has taken hold of someone’s throat and upper airways, with the responsible invader being one of “well over 200 viral strains”. But the original meaning of the word ‘cold’ was well established before germ theory took hold in the late 1800s.

It did not refer to the transmission of illness between humans.

The word dates back to the 1530s meaning, “indisposition involving catarrhal inflammation of the mucous membranes of the nose or throat.” Originally, the term simply referred to the signs and symptoms observed when a person was exposed to cold environmental conditions. ‘Catching’ derived from, “you’ll catch your death [of cold]” which again simply meant that you could become sick and potentially die if you went out and became wet and cold. No virus required.

However, by the 1950s, the common cold had morphed into what was believed to be a contagious viral illness, with “rhinoviruses” being frequently implemented as the culprit. There was even a Common Cold Unit (CCU) that operated near Salisbury in the United Kingdom from 1946-1990 to, “study methods of cultivating and transmitting colds in human volunteers”. The history of the facility was described by author Beth Greenhough in 2008:

The hospital was converted into 12 flats, each housing 2 volunteers, and other spaces for recreation rooms, administrative, research and catering facilities. The first volunteers arrived on 17th July 1946, beginning a research effort that lasted over 44 years and involved (among other things) around 20 000 volunteers, a wide range of scientists working on respiratory viruses, medical and catering staff, tissue culture technologies and selection of carefully cultivated pedigree cold viruses.

Most volunteers regarded their time at the CCU as akin to being at a holiday camp with free food and accommodation, as well as some bonus pocket money. As reported by the BBC in 2019 in a headline titled, “Why thousands went on holiday to the Common Cold Unit,” the typical 10-day stay was welcomed by housewives, among others, who often went there for a rest. The CCU was funded by British tax payers through the Medical Research Council, a division administered by the Government of the United Kingdom.

Many of the CCU’s experiments were of dubious scientific merit, and they often “infected” subjects with crudely mixed cultures placed directly into the nasopharynx (upper part of the throat). With such experiments, the CCU scientists did not once demonstrate that it was viruses that were infecting and causing disease in the study participants. That was because they could not find actual viral particles in the fluids of any of the volunteers. Additionally, they often needed to employ other factors to increase the chances of causing a cold:

…only one in three volunteers, on average, usually developed a cold, despite, over the lifetime of the unit, some rather extreme experiments in making humans more susceptible. These included chilling volunteers, deserting them on an island for three months to decrease their immunity, and shutting them in wardrobes while spraying them with fake sneezes.

Some of the incidental claims by the CCU’s researchers were equally dubious. Clinical administrator Dr. John Wallace wrote about the nonsensical circular benefits of participating in the experiments in a letter to volunteers:

Our virologists are expert at giving volunteers a dose of the virus which produces at worse a slight illness, but at the same time gives protection against a natural infection by that particular virus.

Virologist David Tyrrell led a team at the CCU and made the first description of what was said to be a human coronavirus in 1965 in an article published in the British Medical Journal. At the time, the sample was known as ‘B814’ and was obtained from a “boy with a typical common cold in 1960”. But how did they know that viruses were present in their mixture? Citing only indirect findings and without evidence of an independent variable (the claimed “virus” particles), they reported that:

These experiments indicate that the infectivity of B814 can pass a bacteria-tight filter, is inactivated by ether, and can induce colds in volunteers given sufficient antibiotics to cure a fully developed infection with the Eaton agent (M pneumoniae). These results showed that B814 is a virus, not a mycoplasma, and that it is not an adenovirus, enterovirus, or rhinovirus because it is ether-labile.

Subsequently, electron micrograph images of the sample, already asserted to contain viruses, were taken by Scottish virologist June Almeida and published in 1966. The virus hunters wrote in Nature magazine in 1968 that the:

Particles are more or less rounded in profile… there is also a characteristic ‘fringe’ of projections…recalling the solar corona… which they suggest should be called the coronaviruses.

The story was sold to the world that these “coronaviruses” caused the common cold, but examining the methodology they were employing reveals that they were making a considerable number of assumptions.

By the 1960s, virologists had generally abandoned trying to directly isolate viruses from humans and had turned to the new trend of virus cultures to undertake ‘isolation’. In the introduction of a 1962 paper, “Virus Isolations From Common Colds Occurring In A Residential School,” the authors state that,“the viruses can be cultivated in rolled tissue cultures of human embryo-kidney cells maintained at 33℃. They produce a focal cytopathic effect.”

This is clearly a deceptive use of the word “isolation” because cytopathic effects (CPEs) refer to the microscopic appearances of the cells breaking down. The same effects can be observed in test tubes simply by stressing the cells when transferring them into new mediums and with the addition of toxic compounds such as antibiotics. The presence of a virus was never directly established, and there was certainly no physical isolation taking place. The researchers did not appear to be concerned that even with their loose definition of the word “isolation” they only saw CPEs in 18 out of 59, or 30%, of colds, although they said this could be due to the culture cells used. They had some success stressing human embryo-kidney cells and causing CPEs, but it is hard to imagine what this cell type or this process has to do with common colds.

It was also admitted that, “we were unable to collect washings from boys without colds.” As is so often evident in virology, the paper relinquished a disciplined scientific method because a suitable control group was not being used for comparison. They conceded that, “as we had no specimens from boys without colds there was no epidemiological evidence that the viruses isolated were actually causing the illnesses observed” and then went on to claim that, “such evidence has been obtained by others.” However, “such evidence” was not apparent in the cited papers either, as none of them demonstrated that the particles they called viruses were either infectious or the cause of disease. Moreover, the lack of valid controls meant much of their work could not be considered scientific. At best, they were making some amusing observations about snot!

Perhaps because of the complete failure to find actual viral particles that could transmit between humans and cause the common cold, the CCU inevitably found other research areas more attractive though arguably, equally unfruitful. By the 1960s, the CCU became increasingly involved in the new trend of “culturing” viruses in the laboratory and contributed to the ever-growing list of viruses purported to cause the common cold. It was one of the several teams that enthusiastically announced that they were discovering various rhino-, adeno-, parainfluenza-, and of course corona- “viruses”. Now we are told that over 200 strains of viruses are apparently implicated in the common cold. All that these researchers showed was that by mixing a patient sample with abnormal cells and then utilizing different test tube techniques to stress them, various nano-particles could be seen in the breaking-down biological soup.

From these uncontrolled experiments, whole families of “viruses” were created, contributing to the generally accepted notions in medicine that these in vitro (test tube) particles were: (a) present in living humans, and (b) the cause of the common cold. But, clearly, neither of these fundamental observations was proven by the CCU, nor have they been proven since. And yet most people believe the common cold is definitely a viral condition: they would probably even say it is a scientific “fact” or “principle”.

Amongst its other activities, the CCU was also trying to find a vaccine for colds. However, after 44 years as director of the CCU, David Tyrrell conceded that, “they have studied immunity to rhinovirus and coronavirus colds down to the molecular level, though this has not yet resulted in the production of a vaccine.” For virus hunters, their fixated mindset does not allow for the possibility that the common cold may not be caused by a virus. This is a tragic mindset that hinders our understanding about the real causes of illness and our best ways to health.

Despite remaining optimistic about the future of “antiviral” medications, when the unit closed down in 1990, Tyrrell went on to admit that, “studies of synthetic antivirals in volunteers for decades [had] yielded meager results.” Without a touch of irony, one of the obituaries for Dr. Tyrrell stated that, “though he never found a cure, he discovered almost everything we know about cold viruses.” However, it remains unclear what, if any, actual tangible benefits for human health came out of the 44-year existence of the CCU. One of the reasons the unit was set up was to reduce the impact the common cold has on the economy — which is estimated to run into tens of billions of dollars annually for some countries. Clearly, it failed in that objective.

Indeed, “almost everything we know about cold viruses” cannot be said to have translated into any meaningful health or economic improvements for the public. Additionally, perhaps the British taxpayers would not have been happy to fund the CCU’s so-called human transmission experiments at the facility had they known about the complete failure of previous transmission attempts with influenza dating back to 1918. (Daniel Roytas’ book Can You Catch A Cold?: Untold History and Human Experiments provides a comprehensive overview of the human studies involving colds and flu as well as possible mechanisms at play if they are not contagious conditions.)

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